Selected Talks and Conference Papers

Upcoming:

“The Queer Bonds of Slavery: Queer Funerary Monuments and Roman Freedpeople,” Queer Families in the Ancient Mediterranean, Lambda Classical Caucus (LCC) panel, Society for Classical Studies Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, January 2-5, 2025.

“Making Roman Youths at Pompeii: The Ethics of Appropriation from Guglielmo Plüschow to Matteo Della Corte,” Classics Colloquium, University of Pennsylvania, April 10, 2025.

Recent:

  • “Lost and Found in Ancient Rome,” Tuesday Talks, Society of Fellows of the American Academy in Rome, October 15, 2024. [Watch a recording here. Note: this was a general audience talk for non-specialists].

  • “Not In His Own Words: The Ethics of Speech Writing in the Roman Republic,” Crafting a Lie. Forgeries in the Classical Tradition, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, May 8-10, 2024.

  • “The Body Work and Biohacking of the Boy: Body Hair, Somatic Technologies and the Enslaved Puer in the Roman Empire,” Slavery and Technology in Greco-Roman Worlds, University of California - Davis, January 26-27, 2024.

  • “Reading Rome through Death,” Keynote speaker, Critical Antiquities Network graduate seminar, Reading Rome, Rome, June 30, 2023.

  • “Unmapping Rome: Wayfinding toward subaltern topographies and spatiality in the Roman city,” Babcock Lecture Series, Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies (ICCS), Rome, April 12, 2023.

  • “Re-thinking the bearded portraits of the Julio-Claudian family: The depositio barbae from subaltern ritual to dynastic event?” Associazione Internazionale di Archeologia Classica, Rome, March 27, 2023.

  • with Elle Pérez “RITES,” Shoptalk (short film and conversation), The American Academy in Rome, March 20, 2023.

  • “Transphobia and the trans* man in the tribas,” Classics and Ancient History Seminar, Durham University, UK, March 9, 2023.

  • “Wayfinding toward Subaltern Topographies of Ancient Rome,” Classics and Ancient History Work in Progress Seminar, Warwick University, UK, March 8, 2023.

  • “Transphobia and the trans* man in the tribas,” Conforming, Reforming, Trans*forming: Interrogating the Intersections of Trans Studies and Classics, Lambda Classical Caucus (LCC) Panel, 2023 Annual Meeting of the Society for Classical Studies, New Orleans, January 5-8, 2023.

  • “Slaves to Rome, Freedmen to the Colonies: Freedmen and Colonization in the Middle Republic,” Anchoring Ancient Colonization, Groningen University, Netherlands, December 1-2, 2022.

  • “Same-Sex Rape in the Roman Military: Catullus (c. 15, 28) and the Poetics of Homosociality,” Ancient Rape Cultures: Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian, Institutum Romanum Finlandiae (The Finnish Institute in Rome), October 27-28, 2022.

  • “The aedileship, the agricultural handbook and the villa from Cato the Elder to Varro.” AgroCCol conference, Text and Practice: Interdisciplinary Dialogues on the Status of the Agricultural Treatise, HiSoMa – Lyon, France, June 1-3, 2022.

  • “Notes from the Post-Classics Future: Classics without its core?”, Res Difficiles 2022: A Digital Conference on Challenges and Pathways for Addressing Inequity in Classics, May 20, 2022 [online].

  • “Slaves to Rome, Freedmen to the Colonies: Freedmen, Citizenship and Colonization in the Middle Republic.” Association of Ancient Historians (AAH) annual meeting, University of California San Diego, April 28, 2022. [online]

  • with Elena Isayev, “Displacement and the Role of the Humanities: Towards a Manifesto?”, Mediterranean Displacements Project, Rutgers University – Newark, April 27, 2022. [online webinar]

  • “The Puer in the Princeps.” Respondent: Amy Richlin (UCLA). Lees Seminar, Rutgers University – Camden, March 25, 2022. [online]

  • “Wayfinding towards Subaltern and Shared Topographies of the Roman City,” Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World (AAMW) graduate program, University of Pennsylvania, March 4.

  • “Beyond the city walls: Varro, the aedileship and the villa,” Australasian Society for Classical Studies (ASCS) annual conference 43, Hobart, February 8-11, 2022. [online]

  • “On seeing the queer in antiquity”, artist talk for Alexander Mansour exhibition, Commonweal Gallery, Philadelphia, December 10, 2021.

  • “Getting Lost and Finding Yourself in Ancient Rome,” Department of Classics, Princeton University, December 9, 2021.

  • “Seeing Rome from the Streets: Wayfinding towards a Subaltern Topography of the City of Rome,” Department of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies, Bryn Mawr College, October 1, 2021.

  • “Wayfinding among the Living and the Dead: Monuments, Prepositions and Spatial Identities at Rome.” at The Spatial Turn in Roman Studies II, Durham University, UK, December 2-3, 2020. [online].

  • “Street View: Monuments, Prepositions and the Creation of Spatial Identities at Rome.” at North American Congress of Greek and Latin Epigraphy (NACGLE), Washington D.C., January 5-7, 2020.

  • “Rome’s Next Generation: Youth Agency in the Late Republic and Augustan Age.” at Taking the lead in late Republican and early Imperial Rome: office, agency and initiative, University of Bielefeld, Germany, July 15-16, 2019.

  • “Upending Age Models: Octavian from puer to iuvenis.” at The Roman Civil Wars of 49-30 BCE: Analyzing the Breakdown of Models, The British School at Rome, Italy, July 22-24, 2019.

  • "Fashioning an imperial aetas: Nero's portrait, the depositio barbae, and the Iuvenalia." at Archaeological Institute of America Annual Meeting (January 4-7), Boston, January 5, 2018.

  • "Fashioning an imperial aetas: Nero's portrait, the depositio barbae, and the Iuvenalia." at Ages, Ageing, and Old Age in Greco-Roman Antiquity, VIII Arachne Conference, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, October 25-27, 2017.

  • "Growing the State: The cult of Iuventas in the Middle Republic and Augustan Rome." at Religion and the State in Classical Greece and Rome, Princeton University, September 22-23, 2017.

  • “The Pygmy Motif as Somatic Spectacle: Somatic Dialogues in the House of the Menander, Pompeii.” at Archaeological Institute of America Annual Meeting (January 6-8), Toronto, Canada; January 8, 2017. Open session.

  • “Acting Your Age on the Roman Stage: The Plautine Adulescens in Middle Republican Rome.” at Society for Classical Studies Annual Meeting, (January 6-8), Toronto, Canada; January 6, 2017. Open session.